Air pollution from automotive emissions is both an environmental and economic problem. As such, many nations of the world are seeking to reduce their carbon emissions and reliance on fossil fuels and are implementing, or considering, initiatives such as carbon trading schemes and renewable energy targets. Innovative solutions are required to help address these significant issues in the short and long terms, solutions that provide individuals, industry, and nations alike with the ability to minimize fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions.
In recent years, vehicle manufacturers have made great steps toward creating vehicles that are more efficient. This has been achieved primarily by adding better technology, offering tighter control of engine management and other vehicle power train innovations such as hybrid systems. Even so, because of the large number of factors affecting vehicle efficiency, and broad vehicle operating ranges, the efficiency of vehicles is not fixed, but varies greatly based on factors including operating conditions and driving style.
The way a vehicle is driven has a profound effect on efficiency; a United States government website www.fueleconomy.gov states that changing driving style can reduce fuel consumption by up to 33%. If the world's vehicles were driven more efficiently, operating costs could be reduced significantly, and fuel demand and consumption could be reduced by several hundred million liters per day. This could be achieved immediately with the world's current vehicle fleet. However, due to the large number of factors affecting vehicle efficiency, which is undoubtedly further compounded by the multitude of different vehicles and driving conditions that exist, drivers are generally unaware of how to drive their vehicle at optimum efficiency in every driving condition.
There is currently great awareness of the impact of using fossil fuels in terms of climate change, and along with it, a known need to reduce this impact. This is particularly important for the automotive sector as these vehicles run almost exclusively on fossil fuels. The first challenge in addressing this problem is to accurately measure the greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, these measurements may then become the basis for actions such as carbon accounting and offsets. Typically, accounting of motor vehicle carbon emissions is done as a post-calculation at intervals during the year, based on either total volume of fuel consumed or, even more crudely, based on the distance traveled by the vehicle. Alternatively, a fuel-based method is generally more accurate and relies on a centrally collated source of data, such as fuel purchase data, the latter which not only includes the volume of fuel consumed but also the type and grade of the fuel at each fill-up. However, both of these methods still only provide an estimation of carbon emissions because, even on the simplest level, not all fuel consumed is actually burned and, for even a given type and grade of fuel, the carbon emissions generated by a given volume of burned fuel varies greatly depending on many engine and vehicle exhaust system operating conditions, the driving conditions, and various environmental conditions. Moreover, the levels of many of the non-carbon emissions from the tailpipe of a vehicle are even more sensitive to these operating, driving and environmental conditions.
It is to be understood that, if any prior art information is referred to herein, such reference does not constitute an admission that the information forms part of the common general knowledge in the art, in Australia or any other country.
Thus, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art systems, designs, and processes as discussed above.